


Catching Butterflies

by LouiseWolff



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Timelines, An attempt at reconnection, Bongo is still dead though, But also happy times, Dorks are the best, F/F, F/M, Hopefully no guns, Max has no knowledge of events after Chloe's first 'death', Multi, Please be smart about this Max, Poor Bongo, Rachel Amber Lives, Shenanigans, When did people even start attending Blackwell, how to save a life, there will be angst
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-05
Updated: 2016-12-19
Packaged: 2018-09-06 19:11:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8765536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LouiseWolff/pseuds/LouiseWolff
Summary: The sight before me is familiar, my room in Seattle, my collection of stuffed animals behind me, the rain-pattered window overlooking Washington Park, the pillow I knitted with mom next to me. I stand up, my legs wobbly, and move to the mirror. My body feels heavy and light all at once, the kind of tired you are after a good work-out. But it’s more profound than that, something impossible to put into words, something so fundamental it’s nearly unnoticeable.I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t my face, same as ever, not a trace of what just happened on my skin. Not even a single hair out of place. 'Come on Max, there’s no way you just dreamed that up.'AU where Max goes back in time when Chloe is shot, except it’s not a few minutes, it’s 13 months.





	1. Rebirth

**Author's Note:**

> So I just got hit by this plot-bunny after playing Love is Strange, an adorable and well-written fan-inspired little game about Life is Strange (check out here, it's free! http://loveisstrange-vn.tumblr.com/).
> 
> Needless to say, this story will focus on a bunch of 'what-ifs' and will feature at least one f/f relationship. That said, I'm currently really just figuring things out as they go, so not even I know what to expect! Updates will be sporadic.
> 
> Enjoy.

**October 7 th, 2013**

The air around me isn’t warm or cold, it’s this lukewarm temperature that makes it feel there’s no air at all. But I can feel every shift of it, every brush against my skin, how I’m pushing it away with my body, how it closes back behind me like thick, see-through liquid.

My hand is grasping at it, the air, the strings that I can see woven between me and her. They’re all tangled, bunched together in knots, straining as if threatening to snap at any moment, frayed like they’ve been abused, tugged on a few times too much.

Quite like the worn pair of earplugs tangled in my pocket, the tinny sound of the still-playing song making ripples around me.

I pull and I pull, moving myself closer to her, the world around us moving as if in slow-motion, stuttering like a bad VHS tape. But there’s something blocking me. Someone. A boy, his presence leaving a charge in the air, making my skin prick uncomfortable. Or maybe it’s not him, but the gun in his hand, smoke curling from the barrel, an arc of blood slowly moving to surround him like a gaping maw.

The threads are soaked with red liquid, melting them, snapping them in half. The girl doesn’t see me, her eyes wide, growing glassy.

Empty.

There’s something familiar about her, not the tattoo, or the blue hair, or the way she dresses. It’s her presence I recognize, a warmth that is quickly fading.

My fingers close around her end of the thread, my hand pushing into the globs of blood suspended in the air but slowly falling. It’s warm to the touch.

And then I pull the threads towards me. Her body jerks as if shot another time, and then I am thrown away from her, to the back wall, the bullet goes back to the gun, the girl walks out, the boy looks at himself in the mirror, I meet his eyes…

An unseen force propels me backwards, ungently forcing me through a reverse playthrough of the last few minutes, but the minutes become hours, and the hours become days. I see Arcadia bay, and then suddenly there’s Seattle, and I know I should stop it, but I don’t know how.

I try to let go of the threads, my fingers frozen in a death-grip. As the world flies by, I see some of the knots untangle, the string repairing itself just a little. I see snow falling into the sky, leaves floating gently up from the ground to attach themselves to their respective trees, returning to a healthy color as the clouds break and the sun bathes everything in warmth. Puddles evaporate from under my feet, and I feel like gravity is reversed as my body flies through time like it’s tangible, like it’s air.

I give another hard tug at the threads, almost using them as reins to steer myself, and suddenly I’m able to let go. There’s a brief moment of falling, and then…

I blink, drawing in a startled breath.

The sight before me is familiar, my room in Seattle, my collection of stuffed animals behind me, the rain-pattered window overlooking Washington Park, the pillow I knitted with mom next to me. I stand up, my legs wobbly, and move to the mirror. My body feels heavy and light all at once, the kind of tired you are after a good work-out. But it’s more profound than that, something impossible to put into words, something so fundamental it’s nearly unnoticeable.

I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t my face, same as ever, not a trace of what just happened on my skin. Not even a single hair out of place. _Come on Max, there’s no way you just dreamed that up._

I move to my desk, momentarily halting my gaze fondly at the old Polaroid on proud display. The laptop is locked, my old profile picture making me pause, breath halting. _I swear I changed that._

The sight of Chloe’s dorky, smiling face next to mine sends a knife of guilt down my stomach, and I quickly unlock the device.

The first thing I do is check facebook, but most of it is crap that doesn’t tell me anything.

“Honey!” Mom calls from downstairs. “Dinner’s ready!”

“Geez!” I jerk at the sound, almost sending the camera off the desk. I attempt to calm my frantic heart by putting a hand over it. “Be right down!” I call, my voice a little wavery.

I check the time, out of habit more than anything, and my heart freezes.

August 7th – 2012.

Over a year ago.


	2. The Year of the Phoenix

**August 7th, 2012**

Had it all been a dream then? My last schoolyear, getting accepted at Blackwell, moving to Arcadia… The girl’s death? I look at my shaking hands, and the lines in them tell me nothing.

My mind scrambles for a logical explanation, and I clench my right hand, the one I raised when-

I raise it instinctively, but then my brain catches up, and I snatch my own wrist. No, no, I can’t do this. What if I go back another year? What if I end up going further? What if the next thing I knew was waking up as my 6-year-old self, fully conscious of my entire future?

I’m pretty sure there are rules about time-travel.

On that note…

My fingers type feverishly, opening tab after tab after tab on time-travel theories, movies, the butterfly effect….

“Honey!” Mom’s voice breaks the haze of panic, my heart beating wildly in my chest. She sounds impatient, and then I remember she had called before.

“Yeah!” I take a longing look at my laptop, but I stand and walk through the room. My movement is stunted, like a newborn giraffe, except my legs are a little too short, my body a little too small. I walk carefully through the hallway, down the stairs, unlike the blind dash I remember doing most of the time. I ignore the pictures on the walls, the one with family and friends. Somehow I feel like, if I look at them, something about me will break.

At the sight of my parents, I stop and blink, taking a deep breath. If they had noticed their 18-year-old future daughter suddenly inhabited the 17-year-old body of their current daughter, they weren’t showing it.

Dad is reading something on his iPad, hanging back in his chair, a steaming pan of rice on the table next to him. Mom is pouring wine into the two glasses on each side of the table, one for her, one for dad. She smiles wryly as I descend the last few steps in a rush, my knees buckling.

“Careful, how many times do I have to tell you to take it easy on the stairs, you’ll break something!” The reprimand is painfully familiar, but her eyes crinkle as she puts a wineglass back down. She had long-since given up on winning this particular argument.

I nod, even though she can't see. “Sorry.” But we both know it’s hollow, automatic.

It surprises me, how fast things are starting to feel familiar, normal.

Home.

The feeling vanishes when I look at the food, and realize that there is no way I will be able to eat a single thing. My stomach felt like a wrung-out towel, all twisted up into itself, dry and tense. “Mom?”

“Yes?” I must sound horrible, because her brow crinkles in worry as she looks up, and dad stills in his chair, as if waiting for something. “I don’t feel so good.”

She eyes me strangely, and I frown. “What?”

“You’re bleeding.” She approaches me, grabbing a pack of tissues from the counter. “What happened?”

I touch my face, and my fingers come away red and glistening. I hadn’t even noticed. It would explain the slow pounding that was starting in my head, and the building fatigue in my muscles.

I guess I wasn’t as unaffected by my journey as previously thought.

“I don’t-“ She pushes a tissue against my nose, my hand automatically holding it in place. The touch feels like a hammer against my skull, and I stumble. Mom’s hands wrap around my shoulders to steady me, her eyes gaining a worried shine.

“Honey?”

“I don’t know.” The words are muffled against my own hand as the world starts to spin.

Dad rises, his presence a blur as my eyes unfocus. His face becomes a void as he approaches, and I push myself away from grasping fingers.

“Maybe we should call a d-“ The words are weirdly echoing, bouncing around in the confines of my skull, and before I hear the end of the sentence, the world goes upside down and inside out.

What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object? Warren once asked me this question, and now I finally know the answer: the implosion currently happening within my body.


End file.
